Copyright notice

All information / data contained in this site is copyrighted by the author unless otherwise noted.  No copyrighted information on this site can be used in a publication without the expressed written permission from the author.  For more information, please send an email to Keith Montz at kmontz@gmail.com. 

History

In the middle of the 1990s, I started scanning photos, finding articles and making contacts with other Montz family members along with some Dalferes and Waguespack family members in the hopes of trying to save the knowledge of the family history.  At the time, the Internet was popular but not as widely used as it is today.  The tools for creating websites back then were crude and somewhat required a computer science degree to accomplish some basic designs. 

At some point in the summer of 2001, I decided to put all of this on a website so that it could be easily reached by the descendents of the Montz, Dalferes, Waguespack and other families.  Note that in 2001, there was several popular photo sharing websites but the drawback was placing anything on them meant: (a) that company managed everything and may own rights, (b) the company could delete information; (c) data potentially could be lost if the company went out of business.  Therefore this made the choice of building a Genealogy Website the best decision.

Website Updated in July of 2019

In July of 2019, the site finally went through an upgrade which you are now seeing.  If you find anything not working, please send me, Keith Montz, an email at kmontz@gmail.com. to let me know.  Also if you would like to contribute information and content, please feel free to send me information.  You will retain any copyrights that you own and I will acknowledge your contributions and copyrights.

Contributors Thus Far

I am very thankful for the contributions from Dwayne A Montz and also Monty Michael Montz who I spoke to several time back in the late 1990s and also when putting the website online with their contributions.  The overwhelming share of photos and all information on the Montz and Dalferes families came from my father, James Dalferes Montz and Ted Joseph Montz.   Nothing on this entire website came from Ancestry type sites. The websites used are listed in the Links webpage.

Updates on Contributors

• Ted Joseph Montz passed away on August 2, 1987 at the age of 58 in Houston, Texas from complications from Ischemia Heart Disease and Pneumonia which lead to a heart attack.
• James Dalferes Montz passed away on October 5, 2012 at the age of 85 in Horseshoe Bay, Texas from an accident after surgery while in recovery.  The Doctor was not at fault and after surgery, the Doctor said he had never seen a more healthy man at 85 who should live to 100 years old.
• Monty Michael Montz passed away on December 29th, 2018 at the age of 77 in Friendswood, Texas.

Why "ws"?

When the decision was made to purchase a website, "montz.com", "montz.net" and "montz.org" were available but there was also a new extension "ws" which meant "world site", so that looked like the extension to choose.  The ".com", ".net" and ".org" extensions were always identified with the United States so this was the second line of reasoning behind choosing an extension that was not geographically identifiable or limited.

No User Tracking Done on this Website

So many websites track information about the visitors.  This website does not do any visitor tracking of any kind.  All information is designed with simple HTML and some very simple Java scripting to make the load time quick and very portable.

Photos and Information Privacy Concerns?

As you explore this website, you might ask if it is a good idea to have photos of family publicly available.  My profession has been in Computers since graduating from college in the 1980s with a Computer Science degree, and if you have not figured it out, there is nothing electronic that can be hidden or kept secret if someone or an entity desires to find it. 

1. Your phone uploads your contacts, photos, appointments and web searches to the cloud. 
2. Your phone, when GPS tracking is turned on and you are driving, informs hosts like Google your location for more reasons than getting navigation and traffic data.  It provides hosts the location you are currently at and a history is kept.
3. Your home Tablet, Computer, Entertainment TV device and Virtual Assistant sends information on you to a central data repository on what you like to search on the Internet, view on the Internet, watch on TV, record, download from the Internet, ask questions about and purchase. 
4. Your bank and credit card companies, track your expenditures to create marketing profiles along with spending habits to protect against fraud. 
5. Your emails and text messages are stored in the cloud. 
6. There are websites that can give the user an estimate or factual on how much someone else is worth, their income, credit score and even civil/criminal judicial records. 
7. There are websites that use phone text history, phone call history, phone GPS coordinate history, gasoline purchase history, credit card purchases to project the possibility of someone having or had an affair along with giving the name and address of the two possible adulterers. 
8. At your home, your Internet Service, your Satellite or Cable TV service, and even the movies you rent have you sign a waiver on your rights to allow your information to be collected by the company that you are using where it might be sold, even if they state it will not until you discover the proverbial "fine print" caveat legal paragraphs.  There has to be these legal caveats for more reasons than one.  As an example a Service Provider may be bought or sold where this allows the data on a customer to be transferred and prohibits lawsuits.
9. Your Electricity, Water and any utility usage is publicly available. 
10. Where you live is public information. 
11. Your phone numbers and email addresses are publicly available. 

Manufacturers, Retailers, Banking, Political Groups and Consumer Marketing Groups depend upon consumer metrics, marketing demographic information so there has been data collection on everyone for decades which is extremely valuable, is purchased and is shared on websites.  Being concerned that photos on a website or a Social Media site can somehow be used to target anyone for phishing emails, marketing mail, robo-phone calls is pointless.  Photos with names and places is really not valuable information. 

Therefore, I do not have any concerns about this website.  If anything could be said about this website regarding protecting data, it is like taking the approach of "hiding in plain sight" so that information cannot be used wrongly.  The enjoyment that I have in organizing the information and photos has far surpassed my expectations that were originally just to have an electronic photo and information website for me and my family. 

My suggestion to everyone is to recognize that the future is going to be even more transparent regarding anything and everything with electronic data, so do not be concerned if someone sees a photo of you having a good time with your family and friends.  Additionally, if you do not organize your photos then you will regret it in years to come as you try to recall family, people, places and events in photos.